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London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – British Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone said Thursday that the United Kingdom will initiate positive action to ensure workplace equality.

Among the initiatives the coalition government would make are: to name and shame companies that do not provide equality for women workers, give preference to applicants from under-represented groups such as ethnic minorities, gays and disabled people along with placing more women in the boardroom.

The initiatives are contained in the government Equality Strategy, which the minister recently published.

While labor unions welcomed the strategy to remove workplace discrimination based on gender, business leaders were apprehensive it would lead to lawsuits from job applicants.

Featherstone said the target of the coalition government is that 50 percent of all new appointments to public boardrooms by 2015 would be females.

Even on the domestic front, Britain has a lot of catching up in terms of promoting gender equality at home.

According to the newly released international Fairness in Families Index, U.K. was 18th place among 21 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations in the area of equal parenting.

Rob Williams, chief executive of the Fatherhood Institute which released the index, said British families lag in terms of paid paternity leave, time spent caring for children, and men and women’s pay.

Among the measures of family fairness indicators used by the institute were paternity leave, ratio of men’s and women’s time spent caring for children, percent of women in management roles, percent of men in part-time workforce and time spend by men and women performing unpaid domestic work.

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Quitto, Ecuador (AHN) – Ecuador has offered a residency proposal to Wikileaks’ Australian founder Julian Assange after Sweden refused his residency rights earlier this year. Assange has sparked outrage among world leaders after publishing alleged American diplomatic documents last Sunday.

Ecuadorian Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas said his country was open to giving him residency without any problem and without any conditions. “We are going to try and invite him to Ecuador to freely present, not only via the Internet, but also through different public forums, the information and documentation that he has,” he said.

The minister added that Ecuador considers it important to converse as well as listen to him. Wikileaks, through its latest releases, claims that the United States’ diplomats spy on friendly governments and also adds that it has more than 1,600 cables, which are yet to be disclosed. The cables are believed to be originated from the U.S. embassy in Quito.

The minister hoped that the latest offer to Assange would not affect his left-leaning government’s relations with the U.S.

Meanwhile, Australian authorities have started an investigation to find out whether Assange breached any laws in his home country.

Responding at the latest Wikileaks revelations, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez called for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s resignation. “Somebody should study Mrs Clinton’s mental stability,” he said and added, “It’s the least you can do: resign, along with those other delinquents working in the state department.”

Wikileaks has also published a document dated January 2008 about a counter-terrorism cooperation between the U.S. and Brazil – a country, which publicly denies participating in any such operations. According to ex-U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Clifford Sobel, Brazilian police often arrested suspects with terrorism links, but later charged them with customs and drugs offences to distract media’s attention.

The Wikileaks documents also exposed American and British diplomats’ fear about Pakistan’s nuclear material, which if falls into wrong hands, could make world more insecure. The documents warned Pakistan against rapidly constructing its nuclear arsenal despite rising instability in the country. Britain, in September 2009, had expressed deep concerns about Pakistan’s n-arms’ safety and security.

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London, United Kingdom (AHN) – Britain’s health secretary Andrew Lansley announced during a televised interview Sunday that the coalition government is going to ban cheap alcohol, dissuade teenagers from smoking and to encourage young mothers to breastfeed their babies.

Lansley confirmed that the coalition government was preparing a range of interventions intended to reduce certain inequalities. These necessary “state interventions” are the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes, banning low-cost alcohol sales and of introduction of breast feeding areas in the workplace.

These government interventions were said to be necessary to preserve the public health as the “health inequalities” of the poorest sectors of society need to be addressed.

In the same program, Lansley’s attempt to “micro-manage” the lives of people through government intervention drew sharp criticism from former Tory minister Ann Widdecombe. “Now we have got the state actually saying to employers in a time of recession you must provide paid breaks, paid facilities, a special fridge for expressed milk and goodness knows what else for women returning to work who have decided, on their responsibility presumably, to have a child,” she commented.

She added, “It is not appropriate for the state to micro-manage our lives as they are doing.”

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DUBLIN (AP) – An Irish government minister said Saturday he expects an agreement within the next 24 hours on an EU-IMF bailout loan for Ireland worth approximately $115 billion, but he rejected reports that the aid could come with a punitively high interest rate. Communications Minister Eamon Ryan said all sides in the 10-day-old financial rescue talks in Dublin want at least “an outline agreement” before markets open Monday. Ireland has been priced out of bond markets and needs a loan to fund its annual deficits and its cash-strapped banks. But many analysts doubt that the country will be able to afford the repayments on an international bailout unless the interest rates are low. European Union diplomats confirmed that the finance ministers of the 16-nation eurozone, which includes Ireland, would discuss the emerging EU-IMF loan for the Irish at a hastily arranged meeting in Brussels on Sunday. EU spokesman Bernard Bulcke said finance ministers from the 11 other EU members – including Britain, Denmark and Sweden, which have pledged their own bilateral loans to Dublin – would join the Brussels meeting later Sunday in a sign that a more comprehensive negotiated deal could be on the table. Speaking to Irish state broadcasters RTE, Ryan rejected reports carried by RTE and Dublin newspapers that at least part of the bailout would come with an interest rate of 6.7 percent. “I think that figure was inaccurate. And it was unfortunate because it did scare a hell of a lot of people,” Ryan said. He declined to speculate what the average interest rate would be, but said it would be nearer the 5.2 percent average being paid by Greece for its $150 billion EU-IMF bailout in May. Ryan said whatever terms were agreed “have to make sense for us, so that we’re able to pay it back.” A second government minister, Noel Dempsey, sounded less confident of any announcement Sunday. “Our mandate is to get the very best deal, one that will allow us to get out of the present situation,” said Dempsey, the transport minister. “It’s more important to get it right than to get it quick.

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Basra, Iraq (AHN) – Britain has announced that a majority of 150 of its remaining troops will come home from Iraq by spring next year. According to military spokesman Maj. Gen. Lorimer, Britain is planning to withdraw more than 100 British sailors from Iraq once they finish providing training sessions to the Iraqi navy in the southern port of Umm Qasr.

The spokesman denied any links between the troops’ withdrawal and last month’s defense cuts. However, he added that a small number of Britons would continue training of Iraqi army officers as part of a NATO mission.

It may be noted that British has pulled out majority of its forces from the war-torn nation last May.

Maj Gen Lorimer further said that small Royal Navy team should complete the training session by May 2011, adding that British soldiers would be able to spend additional six months – a period Iraq’s council of ministers agreed on November 10, on the training mission.

Umm Qasr is in Iraq’s Basra provice and is the country’s only deep water port. It is also hub where country receives 80% of its grain supply.

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Dublin, Ireland, United Kingdom (AHN) – Ireland formally accepted over the weekend the international bailout offer of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. After hedging for a few days and insisting Dublin had sufficient financial resources, Irish authorities gave in to pressure and asked for a loan.

According to reports, the bailout would be $115.5 billion (77 billion pounds). It would be a three-year loan to be used mainly to rescue Ireland’s debt-ridden banks. The U.K. and Sweden are considering extending additional loans to Dublin, aside from the $115.5 billion bailout.

For this bailout, British taxpayers would shell out $11.5 billion (7 billion pounds), at a time when the country itself is implementing tough austerity measures which would lead to the loss of 500,000 public sector jobs over five years.

Britain is bent on assisting Ireland because of the $225 billion (150 billion pounds) exposure of British banks to Ireland.

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen asked residents Sunday to support the loan. EU Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said the bailout seeks to protect the financial stability of the continent. With the bailout, Irish banks will be restructured to make them smaller, while some analysts forecast some financial institutions would be nationalized.

Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Dublin has a running deficit of more than $24 billion (16 billion pounds), which the Irish government could not afford to finance given present market rates and amid issues of solvency of Irish banks. He said the bailout money would mainly serve as a standby fund, which may not 100 percent be necessarily used.

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As EU experts dug through the books of Ireland’s debt-crippled banks, the question moved from whether Ireland will take an international bailout to under what conditions. |||

Dublin – As EU experts dug through the books of Ireland’s debt-crippled banks, the question moved from whether Ireland will take an international bailout to under what conditions.

On the firing line was Ireland’s prized low business tax, which the government says has lured 1 000 multinationals to Ireland over the past decade – but which it may have to give up to satisfy conditions of being rescued.

The Irish rescue is the latest act in Europe’s yearlong drama to prevent mounting debts and deficits from overwhelming the weakest members of the 16-nation eurozone. Greece was saved from bankruptcy in May, and analysts say Portugal could be next in line after Ireland for an EU-IMF lifeboat.

Officials on all sides cautioned that the Dublin talks could stretch into early December, after Ireland gives more clarity on its plans by publishing a four-year outline for slashing ¤15-billion (about R143.4-billion) from its deficit – forecast this year to reach a stupendous 32 percent of economic output.

The Irish government said the plan, to include ¤4.5-billion in cuts and ¤1.5-billion in new taxes for 2011 alone, will be published by Tuesday – but won’t include any change to its 12.5 percent rate of corporate tax, among the lowest in Europe.

Officials in Germany, France, Britain and Austria argue Ireland should be prepared to raise that rate to help pay off its debts. They say it’s not fair for Ireland to receive aid from EU partners while simultaneously sticking to a tax policy that amounts to unfair competition.

Ireland says the low tax policy is an essential anchor for keeping employers who generate a fifth of Ireland’s gross domestic product and provide the healthiest stream of tax revenue. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, speaking ahead of Friday’s talks, said the defense of the 12.5 percent rate was “a red line” that Ireland would not allow the IMF to cross.

For Lenihan and Prime Minister Brian Cowen, the low corporate tax is one of the few points of unity with Ireland’s opposition Fine Gael party. Giving it up might be the death sentence for Cowen’s government, whose approval ratings are languishing at 11 percent.

But Ireland’s hand has been forced by a recent run on deposits at Irish banks, which are already receiving a minimum ¤45-billion bailout. Allied Irish Banks said Friday it has lost ¤13-billion ($18-billion), or 17 percent, of its total deposit base since June. It also announced plans to sell ¤6.6-billion ($9.05 billion) in new shares next month – likely taking the government’s stake in the bank from 18 percent to more than 90 percent.

The European Central Bank has been stemming deposit losses with short-term loans that have ballooned to a reported ¤130 billion, a quarter of the ECB’s eurozone loan book. But the ECB’s unlimited supply of liquidity to banks is likely to end as the central bank continues to phase out its financial crisis support measures, adding pressure on the Irish government.

Ireland’s representative on the Frankfurt-based bank, Irish Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan, said Thursday he expects Ireland to receive a credit line worth tens of billions of euro that would serve as a backstop for Irish banks struggling to access funds elsewhere.

Critics of Ireland’s low tax on business profits say raising it would be the quickest way to increase state income without hurting consumers. According to Eurostat, corporate tax rates in the eurozone average 25.7 percent, and only Cyprus and Bulgaria are lower than Ireland with rates of 10 percent.

Germany and France, whose rates stand at 29.8 percent and 34.4 percent respectively, have spent the past decade grumbling as some of their own companies and a disproportionate share of US multinationals choose Ireland as their EU headquarters.

“There’s only one real reason for that, namely the avoidance of taxes,” said Markus Ferber, a member of the European Parliament for the German Christian Social Union, part of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition.

Some go even further, saying that the low corporate tax rate was central to Ireland’s economic collapse.

“Ireland has constructed its development strategy for many years not on attracting large-scale corporate investment, but on corporate headquarters activity,” said John Christensen, an economist and accountant who heads the Tax Justice Network, an nonprofit that advocates more transparent tax policies.

Dublin’s “beggar-thy-neighbour tax policy” is helping large corporations shift profits to tax havens outside Europe, hurting both the Irish government and Europe as a whole, Christensen said.

Irish business lobbyists say it would be crazy for the former Celtic Tiger to increase taxes on foreign investors at the moment when Ireland is shedding domestic jobs and depending on high-tech exporters to lead a recovery.

“Higher rates would mean less revenue for the state, as investment and jobs have the potential to move to countries outside the EU. This would not be in Irish interests or in the interest of the wider EU,” said Danny McCoy, director of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, which represents 7 500 employers.

But many more Irish people express disbelief that – in the midst of a crisis caused by Dublin bankers who gambled hundreds of billions on property deals gone bust – the government is bailing out those same banks and defending profits for wealthy multinationals like Microsoft, Intel and Google.

The Reverend Sean Healy, a Catholic priest who leads a pressure group called Social Justice Ireland, called the government focus on protecting bondholders and Fortune 500 companies “hypocritical and deeply unjust.”

“By taking so many things off the table, the IMF and the government have created a situation where most of the adjustments will be made at the expense of the weak, the sick, the vulnerable and the working poor,” Healy said.

There were few signs on Friday of protest on the streets of Dublin, only private expressions of shock and disgust that Ireland’s economy had been mismanaged so badly and fallen so quickly since 2008.

“There’s no point protesting. We’ve gambled away our sovereignty, and all we can do is try not to make matters worse,” said Eamon Delaney, a newspaper vendor. “Our own leaders have made such a shambles of it, the IMF crowd will hardly do worse.” – AP

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– Bailout appears inevitable as IMF prepares to consult Irish – Osborne: ‘It’s in our interest Irish banking system is stable’

George Osborne’s willingness to use taxpayers’ money to support any international bailout of Ireland drew fire from eurosceptic MPs today as speculation mounted that an aid package would be assembled for the indebted nation within days.

With a high-level delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union and the European Central Bank beginning their urgent assessment of the situation in Dublin tomorrow, the chancellor said the UK was ready to stand behind Ireland “because we are good neighbours”.

Stock markets, unsettled in recent days, stabilised today despite continued uncertainty about the size and timescale of any deal. However, Ireland’s borrowing costs remained at unsustainably high levels.

“Ireland is our closest neighbour – the only country with which we share a land border – it is in our interest their banking system is stable. Britain stands ready to support Ireland to bring stability,” Osborne told reporters as he attended a Brussels meeting of finance ministers from the 27 EU nations.

Ireland’s decision to allow the IMF and European bodies to conduct a “short, focused consultation” fuelled expectations that the country would reluctantly accept financial assistance to prop up an economy crippled by a €50bn (£42bn) bailout of its banking sector.

The cost of rescuing Ireland’s banks is expected to rise amid expectations that Allied Irish Bank will reveal as soon as tomorrow the extent of its losses and admit the extent of the damage caused by withdrawals from savers and big companies concerned about the health of the Irish economy.

Brian Lenihan, the Irish finance minister – who insists that the country has not yet asked for any international funds – appeared to concede for the first time that he might need to do so.

“Despite a large range of measures adopted by the government, Ireland is a small country and, if the banking problems in the country are too big for this small country to manage, Europe is making it clear that they will help and help in every possible way to secure the system because we are part of the euro system,” Lenihan told Irish radio.

The EU authorities are determined to prevent anxiety about Ireland spilling across the eurozone, which has been fraught with difficulties since Greece was forced to accept €110bn of aid in April .

One key indicator of contagion will be Portugal’s cost of borrowing, which rose todayin an auction of 12-month treasury bonds.

Lenihan and the taoiseach, Brian Cowen, are likely to try to position any financial assistance as a bailout of the troubled banks – which survive day-to-day with billions of funds from the European Central Bank – rather than the country in an attempt to dampen the political fallout. Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said that while it was “premature” to discuss any package, it would focus on a “reorganisation” of Irish banks. But any money provided would need to be made through the Irish state, and not directly with the banks, he said.

Osborne, who refused to admit whether any UK funds would be in the form of a direct loan or through an existing €60bn emergency Europe-wide mechanism, will also need to tread carefully.

The eurosceptic Conservative MP Bill Cash told the City minister, Mark Hoban, during the emergency questions in the House of Commons today that he should avoid contributing to any eurozone schemes. Another Conservative MP, Harriett Baldwin, told Hoban: “We cannot resolve the problems of the euro.”

Significantly, Hoban was careful not to lay the blame on overspending or bad management by the Irish government, or Ireland’s adoption of the single currency, instead saying: “This is a crisis that flows from the banking sector.”

Osborne was also insistent that any assistance for Ireland was not based on concerns about UK banks’ exposure to Ireland. The state-backed Royal Bank of Scotland alone has loans of more than £50bn to Irish companies and also owns Ulster Bank. “Our engagement is because we are good neighbours, not because we have particular concerns about any particular UK bank. The Bank of England or FSA have not expressed concerns about any UK bank,” Osborne said.

In the markets, which have forced Ireland’s cost of borrowing up to a painful 9% in recent days, bond investors kept up the pressure, forcing up bond yields slightly.

Jim Reid, global credit analyst at Deutsche Bank, said: “The markets are currently saying there will be a resolution in the next few days but any kind of creeping belief that a deal is proving difficult to orchestrate will see spreads widen again.”

Jim Leaviss, head of fixed income at M&G, said he was concerned that Ireland would lose whichever way it turned. “Ireland’s economy is depressed and tax revenues haven’t held up. A tough deal imposed by the EU, particularly one that raised corporate taxes, would persuade companies to leave, depressing tax revenues further.”

Osborne, though, tried to distance himself from expectations that a condition of an assistance package would be a requirement that Ireland raise its 12.5% corporate tax rate – the lowest of any major eurozone country. “It’s up to countries to decide their own tax policies,” he said. European debt crisis Ireland Europe European Central Bank European commission European Union European banks George Osborne IMF Economics Global economy Financial crisis Global recession Banking Euro Currencies Jill Treanor Phillip Inman Elena Moya guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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LONDON (MarketWatch) — European finance ministers are working on an international aid package for Ireland that could total up to 100 billion euros ($136 billion), and would include credit from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. A package of aid for Irish banks would be worth 45 billion to 50 billion euros under the plan, while a broader package designed to shore up Ireland’s finances could range from 80 billion to 100 billion euros, the report said, citing an official familiar with the negotiations. Officials are pressing Britain to participate by offering bilateral loans to Dublin, the report said.

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

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Dead Sea, Jordan (TML) – Nuclear experts from around the world were climbing into craters and clamouring up landslides as they gathered in a desolate corner of Jordan beside the Dead Sea to test their ability to uncover evidence of an unauthorized test explosion.

Some 35 experts from 20 countries poured over the 1,000 square-kilometer (390-square-mile) area during the first two weeks of November, dressed in protective suits and hauling monitors and three-dimensional maps across the desert landscape in the simulation. Later they assembled in campsites to collect and analyze their data.

Jordan itself has no nuclear weapons, nor is it known to aspire to develop them. But, the kingdom does want to become a respected member of the global nuclear community as it embarks on plans to produce energy from atomic power. Fortunately for Jordan, the terrain near the Dead Sea looks like it just experienced a nuclear explosion.

“The sinkholes, landslides, depressions and craters near the Dead Sea provided a perfect venue to conduct the tests,” Matjaz Prah, of the Croatian State Office for Nuclear Safety and director of the 10-day exercise, told The Media Line.

Near Ghour Al-Haditha, a poor farming town, nearly 800 sinkholes big enough to swallow factories and homes punctuate the landscape, the result of Dead Sea’s declining sea level. The sporadic nature of the giant holes is very similar to aftermath of nuclear explosions, explained Prah. Indeed, the massive cavities make the landscape nestling the southern shores of the Dead Sea largely inaccessible to all but the small community of poor farmers who live there.

The exercise was sponsored by the Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), whose task is to develop mechanisms for monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The Vienna-based organization includes 153 countries that ratified nuclear ban treaty, in addition to a further 35 states that have agreed to endorse the agreement.

Tibor Toth, the CTBTO’s executive secretary, said the goal of the experiments was to establish worldwide detection system that relies on reports from 337 facilities.

Nearly half of detection facilities are located in the Middle East, said Toth.

While the CTBT has yet to go into force, the five countries allowed to have nuclear weapons have all adopted unilateral moratoriums on nuclear testing. India and Pakistan followed suit after they conducted tests in 1998.

But the risks of unauthorized tests remain. North Korea tested devices in 2006 and 2009 while other countries, including three in the Middle East — Israel, Egypt and Iran — have signed but not ratified the treaty. Israel has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons, but it is believed by foreign experts to have an arsenal of 100 or more. Iran has been accused by the West of secretly developing nuclear technology for military purposes, a claim Tehran denies.

Meanwhile, to Jordan’s north, Syria is suspected of having undertaken a nuclear-development program that was cut short by a September 2007 air raid Damascus accuses Israel of staging. Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said November 9th that the nuclear watchdog has been pressing Syria to admit inspectors to at least two suspect sites.

In theory, Jordan could find itself in the middle of a nuclear confrontation between Israel and Iran. But, the exercise on the Dead Sea last week was purely scientific and technical, said Darweesh Jasem, assistant general manager of Jordan’s natural resources department. The exercise also boosted the ability of Jordanians to handle nuclear inspections, which officials see as a facet of the kingdom’s ambition to build its own nuclear reactors.

“We had been proposing holding such an exercise in Jordan since 2004. We are very excited about what we can learn from sharing this type of experience with established experts from the world,” he told The Media Line, noting that at least 13 Jordanian experts were among inspectors.

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The kingdom plans to build a nuclear facility near the port city of Aqaba to provide energy and potable water for the energy-poor, drought-stricken nation. The two 1,000-megawatt reactors it envisions developing over the next 15 years will cost billions of dollars, and even more, if it embarks on the second stage of expanding capacity to four reactors with the potential to produce over half of the kingdom’s electricity needs.

With limited financial resources, Jordan will have to raise capital abroad and convince the world nuclear community that it has the technical ability to undertake such an expensive and sophisticated project, officials in Amman say. Jordan has inked deals on nuclear cooperation with France, South Korea, China, Canada, Russia, Britain and Argentina and is preparing for similar deals with other countries.

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